Caffeine

I never realized how helpful coffee is at keeping me awake. That sounds like such a stupid and rather obvious statement but recently I have been discovering the wonderfulness of coffee. I usually shy away from it b/c I always get shaky after drinking it but man, when I need to concentrate it's totally helpful. I don't think I've drank this much coffee ever, even during all my university years.

LSAT suckage

This past Monday marked the beginning of my LSAT studying. After encountering some minor delays (i.e. laziness, lack of motivation, fear and apathy) I finally got down to some real focused studying today (Saturday). I am still on track with my weekly study goals but am now aware and perhaps more realistic about the likelihood of my success on this standardized test. Before beginning my studying, I told my friend my ideal score. I was a tad...ahem, optimistic (out of my freakin mind, I must be brilliant to achieve the score I wanted). No offence to the LSAC people but my goodness, this test blows, particularly the logical reasoning section. They have ten different logical reasoning type questions all with key words and methods of choosing the correct answer. Most frustrating is the wording of the questions. They are so verbose that I get distracted and lost in the vocabulary and long sentences. Here's what I mean:


A habitat's carrying capacity for a particular species is defined as the largest number of individuals of that species that the environment can support for an extended period of time. Each species has its own set of resource requirements, and the carrying capacity of a given habitat for a species is determined by which one of these key resources is scarcest relative to the animal's requirements, and how much of that resource is available. In a particular area of wetland habitat that supports snowy egrets, it is observed over a period of several years that many nesting sites suitable for snowy egrets remain unused.

If the statement above are true, then which one of the following must also be true about the wetland habitat described in the passage above?

A) The habitat's carrying capacity for snowy egrets is greater than its current population of that species.
B) Suitable food sources are scarcer, relative to the snowy egrets' need for them, than are suitable nesting sites in the habitat.
C) At least one resources that snowy egrets require is not present in the habitat.
D) The number of suitable nesting sites that are available but remain unused is determined by the abundance of some other resource in the habitat.
E) Efforts to increase the snowy egret population in the habitat through careful introduction of additional individuals and key resources are unlikely to be successful.

Anyone wanna take a stab at this question? Seriously, if you get it right I'll be forever impressed.

It took me about 20 minutes to attempt an answer only to discover I got it wrong (hence the title of this post). What bothers me the most is that I can never seem to get the logic right. This causes me great frustration and worry. With practice I know I'll improve but there is this lingering doubt that I'll never understand the argument and fail horribly.

These feelings are premature, I know. I've only studied one section, which obviously is not reflective of my ability to do well on the entire test. Actually, I am quite good at the games section and rather enjoy those type questions. It's too bad the games section makes up only 1/6 of the test unlike the logical reasoning section which is at least 1/4 of the LSAT. Who needs logical reasoning anyways?!

Anyhoo, I gotta get back to it.

Bye bye,
Johanna

My journey begins

We don't change what we are, we change what we think what we are.

Eric Butterworth